April 2024 Story Sparks I wrote “The End” for my coastal novel, the first book in a three-book series and met my deadline. Hurrah! Of course, it isn’t really the end but rather the beginning of the next phase. Soon I’ll incorporate my editor’s comments, agree to a title, firm up marketing and publication
March 2024 Story Sparks When I was in High School in Mondovi, Wisconsin, I wrote a column for our school newsletter called “All in the Game with Jane.” It was my first foray into fiction (except for a terrible short story about being lost in Alaska where I’d never been, written in the third grade.
January 2024 Story Sparks A shoutout to the poets begins 2024 even though April is actually National Poetry Month. An established writer, parent supporter and poet, L.R.Knost wrote: Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but
December 2023 Story Sparks I don’t remember which church I first heard it in, but I know it was a Lutheran congregation. The tune was to the Shaker hymn “’Tis a Gift to be Simple, ‘Tis a Gift to be free” but the lyrics were to a song written in 1963 titled “The Lord
November 2023 Story Sparks It came as a blow to them. It came to me as a gift. It was our first year on the ranch and funds were scarce and so were jobs when you live seven miles from your mailbox and 11 miles from a paved road. But we’d made the bed
October 2023 Story Sparks Good Work, Good Hearts I won’t get the details correct. I was driving, listening to the radio, and couldn’t find a good place to pull over to write things down. But as soon as I got home I told Jerry. I’d read somewhere that it helps to remember things by
August 2023 Story Sparks Fixing I have a guilty pleasure beside chocolate: it’s watching fixer-upper programs. I also read stories about 700sq ft apartments in New York City that go from a bathroom-size home to looking like we’re inside the Taj Mahal. Not that I’ll ever do a single thing those creative people do
July 2023 Story Sparks Often in the mornings when I walk with Rupert I hear a single engine plane overhead taking lessons. I’m pretty sure it’s a student pilot because the plane runs patterns for landings and other aviation activities just like I did when I flew out of the same Roberts Field in
June 2023 Story Sparks “I use baby shampoo. It has that no tears thing and works just as well. It’s cheaper, too.” The stranger had stopped his shopping cart behind me as I reached for dog shampoo. I’d left Rupie’s shampoo in California and couldn’t find any I’d had in storage. “That’s a good
April 2023 Story Sparks On Easter morning while Rupert and I walked beside desert walls lined with bougainvillea, a large blue heron whooshed its wings above us landing on a palm tree frond. He looked precarious on such a slender strand. I guess the heron trusted not in the frond but in his own
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